Word: chernenko
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Boris Yeltsin just has a cold, says the Kremlin. (Colds are dangerous in Russia. Leonid Brezhnev had a "cold" and it turned out he was gravely ill, addicted to sedatives and barely functional; Konstantin Chernenko had a "cold" and vanished behind Kremlin walls; Yuri Andropov had a "cold" and was dead in weeks.) Well, maybe flu. (Last time Yeltsin admitted to "flu" it was really pneumonia, and he was out of action for two months.) But there's no cause for alarm, officials claimed last week: the President will keep working while he is resting for 10 or 12 days...
...appearances, and even dance to rock music to win the vote," says Zarakhovich. "However, each such recuperation seems to take a heavy toll. These bouts of hyper-activity that followed periods of inaction and illness have led to passivity and long hospital stays, reminding the Russians of the Brezhnev-Chernenko era." How long Yeltsin's latest recovery will last is anybody's guess: "Over last 80 years, the Soviet school of medicine has attained only one major achievement to boast: it has honed to perfection the craft of boosting up Politburo members and keeping them going, even if they were...
...Yeltsin is firmly in charge and overseeing the latest game of Kremlin musical chairs with some skill. In Moscow, however, his frequent disappearances reinforce the perception that the country has already entered the post-Yeltsin era, with the enfeebled President--like the Soviet-era leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Konstantin Chernenko--wielding power in name only. This in turn deepens the fear, often voiced in Western capitals and in Russia, that chaos in the Russian Federation is always lurking just below the surface of daily life. Even the top echelons of Russia's government are concerned. According to a source...
...feeling too bad" and considered himself "out of danger." But the public-relations ploy did little to allay suspicions about the true state of the President's health. For many Russians, it recalled the early 1980s, when the successive deaths of Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko were all preceded by assurances from the Kremlin that they were in fine fettle...
...spoiled communist elite. Once, at a gathering at a state dacha, she warned the children not to break the chandelier. "I was told: 'Not to worry. It's government property, it can be written off.' " By March 10, 1985, the night before he was chosen to replace Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary, Gorbachev was so frustrated with the party's self-satisfied sclerosis that he told his wife, "((The country)) just can't go on like this." Despite her commitment to her husband's reforms, Raisa admits that so far perestroika "has given us much and very little...